Collaboration

Basketball is a team game, and Lin has led the Knicks to six straight victories, with at least seven assists in each game. Almost as remarkable as Lin’s ability to lead his team is Lin’s ability to inspire his fans. Linsanity has infiltrated the English lexicon. Fans adore the Linpossible and Linprobable fairytale of Linderella. Simple words have united fans so much so that one even created a website to generate Lin words: www.linword.com. Where some have found a sense of unity and community, others have found opportunity: at least two people have applied to trademark “Linsanity.” As the Occupy movement recently demonstrated, words and phrases can have a powerful unifying (or dividing) effect on people. The “Linsanity” trademark applications reveal that people can abuse the legal system to advance selfish goals that harm communities. That people can own and restrict access to words or phrases that have entered the English lexicon through a collaborative creative process seems Linsane to me. Perhaps Lin will eventually hire lawyers to protect his name. Or perhaps everybody will recognize the Linsanity of trying to contain Linsanity through the law. \ No newline at end of file